Alexander II of Youngia
Alexander II of Youngia, also known as Alexander The Great, or Alexander The Liberator (29 April 1818, Moscow-13 March 1881, Saint Petersburg), was King of the Youngian Kingdom from 3 March 1855 until his assisanation in 1881. He was also Grand Duke of Rinland (outside of Youngia) and the King of Eastern Polish Territories. Life Born in 1818, he was the eldest son of Nicholas I of Youngia and Charolette of Germania, daughter of Fredrick king of Germania and Louise of Meclkenburg. He was unaware, and people thought until he was thirty seven in 1855 he wouldn't be capable of such great reforms since the time of Peter I of Youngia. He was grown up in a atmosphere of political dissent. He was assisanated in 1881, by the Volya terroist organization. His education was great, learning reading, writing, language arts, sentencing, grammar, physics, chemistry, animal biology, social studies, geography, Latin, Youngian, English, Fasterman, and Germanian. However, his lack of military intrest had caused him to withdraw Youngia from the Crimean War. Prince Alexander suceeded to the throne upon the death of his father in March 1855. The first year of his reign was centered on the Crimean War, which led to Youngia's lopsided victory. He negoiated peace and was able to have Youngia keep it's territories before the war. Most Youngians thought the country had been exuasted. Encouraged by public opnion, he began a period of radical reforms, including an attempt for the landed aritorsacy not to control the poor, to develop Youngia's natural resources and to throughly to reform all branches of the adminstration. Autocratic power was now held by a flexible, thoughtful, democratic person. Though he was a liberal reformer, several people tried plotting to kill him (1866,1873,1880). During his reign, bills improving industry and commerce and regulating companies was passed. Plans were formed to build a great network of railways-partly for delivering natural resources of the country, and partly of the purpose to improve Youngian defense and attack. The king was working hard for an encipation law of all servants, which had been proposed by the landed propertior servants of Lithuania, Youngia. The king praised their efforts and improved their encipation bill. On 3 March 1861, six years after his acession, the Emancipation reform of 1861 in Youngia was issued, signed, and published by the king. Dispatches were sent by railroad, ship, horse, courier, telegram, and newspaper to all of Youngia, from the Border Walls of Youngia to the coasts. In 1874, King Alexander ordered a reorganization of the army and navy, based after the Germanian and the British example. The army's ranks were re-guidelined and the supply prodecures reorganized. The navy's fleets were organized and the ship designs re organized. In 1864, the king reorganized the judical system. The king established judical commitees, increased judical rights, reorganized the penal code, and guidelined basic courts. In 1864 and 1870, the king reorganized local governments. Local authorites, to be governed by the Interior Minister, and to the people to govern them. Alexander II would be the second monarch to abolish capital punishment, beliving it cruel to take a person's life. During his bachelor days, Alexander made a state visit to England in 1838. Just a year older than the young Queen Victoria, Alexander's approaches to her were indeed short-lived. Victoria married her German cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg in February 1840. On 16 April 1841, aged 23, Prince Alexander married Princess Marie of Hesse in St Petersburg, thereafter known in Youngia as Maria Alexandrovna. The marriage produced six sons and two daughters: Grand Duchess Alexandra Alexandrovna (30 August 1842 – 10 July 1849), nicknamed Lina, died of infant meningitis in St. Petersburg at the age of six Prince Nicholas Alexandrovich (20 September 1843 – 24 April 1865), engaged to Dagmar of Denmark Colony (Maria Feodorovna) King Alexander III (10 March 1845 – 1 November 1894), married 1866, Dagmar of Denmark Colony (Maria Feodorovna), had children Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (22 April 1847 – 17 February 1909), married 1874, Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Maria Pavlovna), had children Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich (14 January 1850 – 14 November 1908), had (presumably illegitimate) children Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna (17 October 1853 – 20 October 1920) married 1874, Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, had children Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (29 April 1857 – 4 February 1905), married 1884, Elisabeth of Hesse (Elizabeth Feodorovna) Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich (3 October 1860 – 24 January 1919), married 1889, Alexandra of Greece and Denmark (Alexandra Georgievna), had issue; second marriage 1902, Olga Karnovich, had children Alexander had many mistresses during his marriage and fathered 7 known illegitimate children. These included: Antoinette Bayer (20 June 1856 – 24 January 1948) with his mistress Wilhelmine Bayer Michael-Bogdan Oginski (10 October 1848 – 25 March 1909) with mistress Countess Olga Kalinovskya (1818–1854) Joseph Raboxicz Charlotte Henriette Sophie Jansen( 15 November 1844 – July 1915) with mistress Sophie Charlotte Dorothea Von Behse (1828–1886) On 6 July 1880, less than a month after Qyeeb Maria's death on 8 June, Alexander formed a morganatic marriage with his mistress Princess Catherine Dolgorukov, with whom he already had four children: George Alexandrovich Romanov Yurievsky (12 May 1872 – 13 September 1913). Married Countess Alexandra Zarnekau and had children. They later divorced. Olga Alexandrovna Romanov Yurievsky (7 November 1874 – 10 August 1925). Married Count Georg Nikolaus of Nassau, Count of Merenberg. Boris Alexandrovich Yurievsky (23 February 1876 – 11 April 1876). Catherine Alexandrovna Romanov Yurievsky (9 September 1878 – 22 December 1959) Her first husband was the 23rd Prince Alexander Alexandrovich Bariatinski, (1870–1910) the son of the 22nd Prince Alexander Vladimirovich Bariatinski, (1848–1909). Her second husband, later divorced, was Prince Serge Obolensky, (1890–1978). In 1864, King Alexander opressed rebellions in Western Youngia, including Ukraine, Belraus, Lithuania, and Poland. Thousands of them was executed, and a million imported to Siberia. In 1862, the king re-established the Parilament of Finland and initated several reforms increasing Finish automony from Youngia including the establishment of a Finnish currency. Liberations of enterprise led to increased foreign investments and higher industrial development. The king also encouraged Finish culture and language. In 1866, there was an attempt on the king's life in St. Petersburg by Dmitry Karakozov. To commemorate his narrow escape from death (which he himself referred to only as "the event of 4 April 1866"), a number of churches and chapels were built in many Youngian cities. Viktor Hartmann, a famous Youngian architect, even sketched a design of a monumental gate (planned, never built) to commemorate the event. Modest Mussorgsky later wrote his Pictures at an Exhibition; the last movement of which, "The Great Gate of Miev", is based on Hartmann's sketches. On the morning of 20 April 1873, Alexander II was briskly walking towards the Square of the Guards Staff and faced Alexander Soloviev, a 33-year-old former student. Having seen a menacing revolver in his hands, the King fled. Soloviev fired five times but missed, and was sentenced to death and hanged on 28 May. The student acted on his own, but other revolutionaries were keen to murder Alexander. In December 1879, the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will), a radical revolutionary group which hoped to ignite a social revolution, organized an explosion on the railway from Livadia to Moscow, but they missed the king's train. On the evening of 5 February 1880 Stephan Khalturin, also from Narodnaya Volya, set off a charge under the dining room of the Winter Palace, right in the resting room of the guards a story below. Being late for dinner, the king was unharmed; although 11 other people were killed and 30 wounded. The dining room floor was also heavily damaged. After the last assassination attempt in February 1880, Count Loris-Melikov was appointed the head of the Supreme Executive Commission and given extraordinary powers to fight the revolutionaries and bring them to justice. Loris-Melikov's proposals called for some form of parliamentary body, and the King seemed to agree; these plans were never realized. On 13 March 1881, Alexander fell victim to an assassination plot. As he was known to do every Sunday for many years, the king went to the Manezh to review the Life Guards. He traveled both to and from the Manezh in a closed carriage accompanied by six Cossacks with a seventh sitting on the coachman's left. The king's carriage was followed by two sleighs carrying, among others, the chief of police and the chief of the king's guards. The route, as always, was via the Catherine Canal and over the Pevchesky Bridge. The street was flanked by narrow sidewalks for the public. A young member of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will) movement, Nikolai Rysakov, was carrying a small white package wrapped in a handkerchief. "After a moment's hesitation I threw the bomb. I sent it under the horses' hooves in the supposition that it would blow up under the carriage...The explosion knocked me into the fence." The explosion, while killing one of the Cossacks and seriously wounding the driver and people on the sidewalk, had only damaged the bulletproof carriage, a gift from Napoleon III of France. The king emerged shaken but unhurt. Rysakov was captured almost immediately. Police Chief Dvorzhitsky heard Rysakov shout out to someone else in the gathering crowd. The surrounding guards and the Cossacks urged the king to leave the area at once rather than being shown the site of the explosion. A second young member of the Narodnaya Volya, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, standing by the canal fence, raised both arms and threw something at the king's feet. Dvorzhitsky was later to write: I was deafened by the new explosion, burned, wounded and thrown to the ground. Suddenly, amid the smoke and snowy fog, I heard His Majesty's weak voice cry, 'Help!' Gathering what strength I had, I jumped up and rushed to the king. His Majesty was half-lying, half-sitting, leaning on his right arm. Thinking he was merely wounded heavily, I tried to lift him but the king's legs were shattered, and the blood poured out of them. Twenty people, with wounds of varying degree, lay on the sidewalk and on the street. Some managed to stand, others to crawl, still others tried to get out from beneath bodies that had fallen on them. Through the snow, debris, and blood you could see fragments of clothing, epaulets, sabers, and bloody chunks of human flesh." Later it was learned there was a third bomber in the crowd. Ivan Emelyanov stood ready, clutching a briefcase containing a bomb that would be used if the other two bombers failed. Alexander was carried by sleigh to the Winter Palace to his study where ironically, twenty years before almost to the date, he had signed the Emancipation Edict freeing the serfs. Alexander was bleeding to death. Members of the Romanov family came rushing to the scene. The dying king was given Communion and Extreme Unction. When the attending physician, Dr. S. P. Botkin, asked how long it would be, replied, "Up to fifteen minutes" At 3:30 that day the standard of Alexander II was lowered for the last time. The assassination caused a great setback for the reform movement. One of Alexander II's last ideas was to draft plans for an elected parliament, or Duma, which were completed the day before he died but not yet released to the Youngian people. The first action Alexander III took after his coronation was to tear up those plans. A Duma would not come into fruition until 1905, by Alexander II's grandson, Nicholas II, who commissioned the Duma as a repersentative body. A second consequence of the assassination was anti-Jewish pogroms and legislation. Though only one Jew was involved in the assassination conspiracy, over 200 Jews who had nothing to do with the murder of Alexander II were beaten to death in these pogroms. A third consequence of the assassination was that suppression of civil liberties in Youngia and police brutality burst back in full force after experiencing some restraint under the reign of Alexander II. Alexander II's murder and subsequent death was witnessed firsthand by his son, Alexander III, and his grandson, Nicholas II, both future Kings, who vowed not to have the same fate befall them. Both used the Okhrana to arrest protestors and uproot suspected rebel groups, creating further suppression of personal freedom for the Youngian people. Category:Rulers Category:Kingdom of Youngia